(A local library has a free course on using the internet to research. A friend who has taken it says that there is much, much more than entering a few words into Google.)

I enjoyed reading your citations. And it seems as if the Soviets and China had a little more to do with it than I had been led to believe.

Having said that, the exchanges seem to be able to be described as a kid asking if he could go steal a car. Dad (Stalin) says "No" 5 or 6 times. Finally he says "Go ask your mother (Mao). But if you get into trouble you're on your own."

The kid pesters Mom (Mao). Finally she says in effect, "I don't care." (I couldn't find exactly what was asked or answered, but that's the consensus.)

In all cases the driving force was Kim Il-Sung. There wasn't a conspiracy of the Soviet Union and China feverishly working to gobble up South Korea. It was Kim Il-Sung pestering and pestering and pestering.

AND, had the US made it clear it regarded South Korea as worth defending the invasion would never have happened. Both China and the Soviet Union believed the US when it said it didn't care that much about South Korea, and both Stalin and Mao had considered the US interest in their deliberations.

At the time had the Soviet Union and China wanted to pay the price they could have taken the entire peninsula. Anecdotally, I worked with a guy who was retired at the time and was on the Yalu when the Chinese came across. He was in the retreat down to the 38th Parallel. Acording to "Sarge", there were so many Chinese they couldn't be stopped.

American pilots who were shot down and landed in either China or the Soviet Union were not returned.

Arf